Thursday, May 28, 2009

Since we've been on the subject of cats, the above is one of the high points of our recent trip to Nepal: seeing a Royal Bengal tiger in Chitwan National Park. We were very lucky to get such a close-up sighting (the pics were taken from atop elephants); tigers are both endangered and elusive.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

An absorbing exchange between David Frum and Mark R. Levin. Frum's been arguing for quite some time that conservatism needs to change, having become (especially in its talk-radio form) prone to insular, small-minded obnoxiousness. Levin is now helping make that case.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

h+ magazine: "Is a Terminator scenario possible?" (Found via Instapundit.) Interesting, but I'm left nonplussed by this statement from J. Storrs Hall of the Foresight Institute:

...if all you mean is are the robots going to take over, it's more or less inevitable, and not a moment too soon. Humans are really too stupid, venal, gullible, mendacious, and self-deceiving to be put in charge of important things like the Earth (much less the rest of the Solar System). I strongly support putting AIs in charge because I'm dead certain we can build ones that are not only smarter than human but more moral as well.

Leaving aside the one-dimensional view of humanity and the nastiness of wanting our species to be enslaved, isn't there a problem of logic here? If humans are so venal, gullible, mendacious, and self-deceiving, how can we trust ourselves not to build robots that are just as bad (or worse)?

Thursday, May 21, 2009

On December 29, 1989, Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock index closed out a triumphant decade at 38,916. The Nikkei had begun the 1980s below 7,000 and had pushed above 10,000 in August 1984. It had nearly quadrupled in just five years.

But the Nikkei slid back below 30,000 barely seven months later, and would spend most of the 1990s below the 20,000 line. In the first few years of the 21st century, it often traded below 10,000. A rebound from 2003 to 2007 brought hopes that Japan had moved beyond its “lost decade.” But by late 2008, the Nikkei was back in the four-digit range, and in March 2009 it hit its lowest point since October 1982.

The Nikkei’s rise and fall exemplifies the building and bursting of an asset bubble. It also indicates that cleaning up the mess in the aftermath of a busted “bubble economy” can be a lengthy process indeed. The story takes on particular resonance amid the current U.S. economic crisis, with Japan’s 1990s economic policymaking often cited, albeit with varying interpretations, as a case study in what not to do.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

This statement from Brink Lindsey is not only true but obvious, and that it sounds controversial only underscores the calamitous anti-intellectualism of the current-day right: "In order to make gains for the cause of limited government, we need to convince smart people that we are right."

Meanwhile, the right's supposed leader, Rush Limbaugh, has just weighed in on biology: "We now officially came from a monkey, 47 million years ago. Well, that’s how it’s being presented here. It’s settled science. You know, this is all BS, as far as I’m concerned. Cross species evolution, I don’t think anybody’s ever proven that." Start here, Rush.

Monday, May 18, 2009

One of the unfortunate aspects of our current political scene is that many people now associate libertarianism with Ron Paul, whose small-government ideas come larded with conspiracism and know-nothingism. So I can sympathize with Lindsey Graham's saying Paul is not the leader of the Republican Party, though not with Graham's broader I'm-not-a-libertarian rant.

UPDATE 5-19: And now I've learned something new about Mark Sanford: he's a supporter of "intelligent design," who offered incredibly fatuous comments about evolution ("The idea of there being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being") in a TV interview.

I've now finished Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes, about which I made some provisional comments earlier. I recommend it highly. It's a bit sobering to realize how little so many of us in the West know about the history of Islam. (For instance, I've been surprised to find that Islam's age is a matter of confusion even to some generally well-informed people, with assumptions that it's older than Christianity, or alternatively that it's only 600 or so years old.) I certainly learned a great deal.

Among other things, the book gives a strong sense of just how multifarious Islam is, with multiple and often mutually antagonistic strands that are now playing out, with consequences for the entire world. There's no trace in the book of anything like an apologia for the Taliban, Al Qaeda or Ayatollah Khomeini. But one does get a much better sense of where they and their premodern antecedents came from, which is something we in the West need to know more about.

Before long, we may be seeing a political confrontation between legislators who want to reduce carbon emissions as efficiently as possible with a carbon tax, and those who want to reward their political contributors as efficiently as possible with a cap-and-trade system.

In very short order after my arrival in Washington in January 1973, the Nixon administration came apart at the seams with a daily soap opera of criminal charges, congressional hearings, federal indictments and the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew for bribe taking, followed 10 months later by the resignation of Richard Nixon who was about to be impeached by the Congress....

In the aftermath of all this, Republicans got slaughtered in the midterm elections of 1974, losing 48 House seats and five Senate seats. Republicans had only 144 House members in the 94th Congress.

Two years later, Jimmy Carter was elected president and I was convinced Republicans would be in the wilderness the rest of my political life. After the first 100 days, President Carter's approval rating was 69 percent -- higher than President Obama's.

And then things changed. I made some similar points in my has-the-right-hit-bottom debate with Ryan Sager last February (though admittedly, I'd now have to say the right had not quite hit bottom as of then).

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Over at Hit & Run, Michael C. Moynihan makes fun of The Corner for its pile-on against Jerry Taylor when he criticized Limbaugh and Hannity. But (as I alluded to in the comments) does Reason really have a leg to stand on when criticizing ideological conformity?

Some incisive thoughts on the balance a couple must strike when ballroom dancing.

The man must ... learn to lead. He must learn his steps, think about what steps he is going to do next when dancing, and learn how to communicate his intent through movements in his upper body. The woman, on the other hand, has to learn to follow. She must learn her steps, and also learn not to lead and not to anticipate. Instead she must try to enter into a Zen-like “mind of no mind” so that she can respond instantly to changes in her partner’s shoulder, arm, and hand movements. (The arms of trained ballroom dancers form a “frame,” and maintaining muscular firmness in this frame allows the woman to sense which direction the man is moving. This won’t work if either partner lets their arms go limp: the dreaded “spaghetti arms.”)

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

When Alexander Hamilton was Treasury Secretary, he made some crucial decisions about the nation's debt. One, and above all, he decided the federal government should repay it (including debt taken on by the states). Two, he rejected calls for the government to favor certain creditors (the original bondholders) over others (those to whom the first holders had sold the bonds). These decisions set crucial precedents that the U.S. government will not rewrite contracts and renege on commitments in order to reward political constituencies. Thus was laid a crucial foundation for American capitalism.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Though I'm hoping to attend this Wednesday's Debate at Lolita, "Should Humans Radically Decrease Their Exploitation of Animals?," a tight schedule this week makes that uncertain. Also uncertain is which way I'd vote. In any event, I hope the debaters (particularly the yes debater) will address the question of what (if anything) would justify some exploitation of animals. In speaking to vegan friends, I find they often resort to arguments that some or another use of animals carries no significant benefits (that animal research is unreliable for developing cures for humans; that meat is unnecessary or undesirable as part of a human diet). That makes me wonder: Are they implicitly conceding that if, say, some experiments on rats would save numerous children with leukemia, the experiments would be justified? Or do they think (as I suspect many vegans do) that the experiments would be reprehensible regardless of results? And is the opposition to eating meat dependent on the supposition that meat has no health benefits (and should the fact that people enjoy eating meat carry any weight in the calculus)?

Jack Kemp was a conservative who knew how to reach out to people who'd never voted for, or perhaps even met, a conservative. Would that we had a few more conservative politicians with that ability today. Robert A. George has some thoughtful comments about the late quarterback-Congressman-HUD secretary-VP candidate.

I occasionally Google "Fred Hoyle" because I'm interested in the frequent, and often stupid, invocations of the late scientist (about whose career I wrote here). Often, the dumber ones come from creationists, but here's one that purports to show there once was a scientific consensus that the Earth faces a new Ice Age (and by extension, that scientists' warnings about global warming today should not be taken seriously). Bruce Walker in The American Thinker:

Sir Fred Hoyle is one of the leading cosmologists in human history. No scientist today can claim greater intellectual stature than Hoyle, particularly about our planet in the universe. In 1981, Hoyle published a book, Ice: How the New Ice Age will Come and How We Can Prevent It, in which this brilliant giant of natural sciences warned of the next ice age. The consequences, Hoyle warned, would be disastrous.

The trouble is, there was never nearly as much scientific consensus about global cooling as there now is about global warming. And Hoyle, moreover, was known for his controversial and unorthodox ideas, on a wide range of subjects including climate, so to present him as an an exemplar of the scientific mainstream reflects ignorance, at best, on the writer's part. As does the vague and obscurantist description of Hoyle as a leading expert on "our planet in the universe," when his prestigious work was focused on the universe overall, not on our planet.